Isn't it weird? Out of the three great Antarctic
explorers of the early 1900s, Amundsen
is the one who actually got to the South Pole first yet today is the least fondly remembered. Scott was brave but his preperations
were about as thorough as those of Johnny
Vegas for a marathon; Shackleton's amazing Endurance
expedition failed to even get to its
destination, but both are held more in awe than Amundsen,
at least in the UK. Why? Because both Scott and
Shackleton
told their accounts far better than Amundesen. That's it. Bottom line. Better storytellers. And, of course, he wasn't
British which to those in polite British society of the day was his most unforgiveable sin.

Roald Amundsen was born to a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in Borge near Sarpsborg. His father was Jens Amundsen. Inspired
by Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of Greenland in 1888,
he decided on a life of exploration.

He joined the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897–1899) as
second mate. Led by Adrien de Gerlache,
their ship the Belgica became the first to
winter in Antarctica. Also on board was an
American doctor, Frederick Cook. Cook
probably saved the crew from scurvy,
an important lesson
for Amundsen's future expeditions.

In 1903 Amundsen led the first expedition
to traverse the Northwest Passage between the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, with six
others in the ship Gjøa. They travelled via Baffin Bay, Lancaster and Peel Sounds, and James Ross and Rae Straits to spend two winters exploring over land and ice from the place today called Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada.

During this time Amundsen studied the local Netsilik
people in order to learn Arctic survival skills
and soon adopted their dress. From them he learned to use sled dogs.
Continuing to the south of
Victoria Island, the ship cleared the Arctic Archipelago
on August 17, 1905, but had to stop for the winter
before going on to Nome on the Alaska Territory's Pacific coast. 500 miles (800 km) away, Eagle City, Alaska, had a telegraph station; Amundsen travelled there (and back) overland to wire a success message (collect) on December 5, 1905. Nome was reached in 1906. Due to water as shallow as 3 feet (1 m), a larger ship could never have used the route.

After the Northwest Passage Amundsen
made plans to go to the North Pole and explore
the North Polar Basin. On hearing in 1909 that first
Frederick Cook and then Robert
Peary claimed the Pole, he changed
his plans. Using Fridtjof Nansen's ship Fram
("Forward") he
instead set out for Antarctica in 1910.

Amundsen told no one of his
change of plans except his brother
Leon and Thorvald Nilsen,
commander of the Fram. He was afraid that Nansen
would rescind use of Fram, if he learned of the change.
And he probably didn't want to alert Robert Falcon Scott
that he would have a competitor for the pole.
Since the original plan called for
going around the Horn to the Bering Strait
he waited until Fram reached Madeira to let
his crew know of the change. Every member agreed to continue.
Leon made the news public on October 2.
While in Madeira, Amundsen sent a
nine-word telegram to Scott, notifying
him of the change in destination:
"BEG LEAVE TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC, AMUNDSEN"

On 14 January 1911 they arrived at
the eastern edge of Ross Ice Shelf
at the location known as the Bay of Whales. Amundsen
located his base camp there and named it Framheim,
literally, "Home of the Fram." It was 60 statute miles (96 km)
closer to the Pole than McMurdo Sound,
where the rival British expedition led by Scott
stayed. Scott would follow the route,
discovered by Ernest Shackleton, up the
Beardmore Glacier to the Antarctic Plateau. Amundsen
would have to find his own entirely new path
south to the Pole and, as he found, ascend
the Trans-Antarctic Mountains
to reach the Polar Plateau.

During February, March and early April, Amundsen
and his men laid supply depots at 80°, 81° and 82° South,
along a line direct to the Pole. This gave him some experience
of conditions on the Ross Ice Shelf and provided crucial
testing of their equipment. During the winter at Framheim
they kept busy improving their equipment,
particularly the sledges. These sledges,
the same kind and manufacturer that Scott
used, weighed 165 pounds. During the winter, Olav Bjaaland
was able to reduce their weight to 48 pounds.
On February 4, 1911, members of the Scott's
team on Terra Nova paid a friendly visit
to the
Amundsen camp at Framheim.

Amundsen made a false start to the Pole
on 8 September 1911. The temperatures had risen,
giving the impression of an austral-Spring
warming. This Pole team consisted of eight people,
Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel,
Oscar Wisting, Jorgen Stubberud, Hjalmar Johansen, Kristian Prestrud
and Amundsen. Soon after departure, temperatures
fell below -60°F. On 12 September, it was
decided to reach the Depot at 80°, deposit their supplies and
turn back to Framheim and await warmer conditions.
The Depot was reached on 15 September
from which they hurriedly retreated back
to Framheim. Prestrud and Hanssen
sustained frost-bitten heels on the return. The last day of the
return, by Amundsen's own description, was not organized.
Whether this was the result of poor leadership
or necessity is unclear. At Framheim, Johansen
openly suggested that Amundsen
had not acted properly. Amundsen
then reorganized the Pole party. Prestrud,
with Johansen and Stubberud, was tasked with the
exploration of Edward VII Land. This
separated Johansen
from the Pole team.

The new Pole team, Bjaaland, Hanssen, Hassel, Wisting
and Amundsen, departed on 19 October 1911.
They took four sledges and 52 dogs. On October 23,
they reached the 80°S Depot, and on November 3,
the 82° Depot. On November 15, they reached
latitude 85°S, they had arrived at the
base of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.
The ascent along the Axel Heiberg Glacier
was easier than they expected.
They arrived at the edge of the Polar
Plateau on November 21. Here they camped at
the place they named "Butcher Shop", where 24 of the
remaining dogs were killed. Some of the carcasses were
fed to the remaining dogs, the balance were cached
for the return journey. Blizzards and poor weather
made progress slow as they crossed the "Devil's Ballroom",
a heavily crevassed area. They crossed 87°S on December 4,
and on December 7, they reached the latitude of Shackleton's
furthest south, 88°23'S, 180 km (97 nautical miles)
from the South Pole.

On 14 December 1911, the team of five, with 16 dogs,
arrived at the Pole. They arrived 35 days before
Scott's group. Amundsen
named his camp at the South Pole Polheim, "Home of
the Pole". Amundsen renamed the Antarctic Plateau
as King Haakon VII's Plateau. They left a small tent
and letter stating their accomplishment,
in the event they did not return safely to Framheim.

Amundsen's extensive experience,
careful preparation and use of the best
sled dogs available (Greenland huskies) paid off in the end.
In contrast to the misfortunes of Scott's
team, the Amundsen's trek proved
rather smooth and uneventful. Amundsen
tended to make light of difficulties. They
returned to Framheim on January 25, 1912 with eleven
dogs. Henrik Lindstrom, the cook, said to Amundsen:
"And what about the Pole? Have you been there?"
The trip had taken 99 days, the distance about 1,860 miles.

Amundsen's success was not publicly
announced until 7 March 1912, when he
arrived at Hobart, Australia. Amundsen
recounted his journey in the book The South Pole: An
Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the "Fram", 1910–1912.

In 1918 Amundsen began an expedition
with a new ship Maud, which was to last until 1925. Maud
sailed West to East through the Northeast Passage,
now called the Northern Route (1918-1920). Amundsen
planned to freeze the Maud into the polar ice cap
and drift towards the North Pole (as Nansen
had done with the Fram), but in this he was not
successful. However, the scientific results of
the expedition, mainly the work of H. Sverdrup, were of considerable value.

In 1925 with Lincoln Ellsworth
and four others he flew to 87° 44'
north in two aircraft. It was the northernmost latitude
reached by plane up to that time. The planes landed a
few miles apart without radio contact, yet the crews managed
to reunite. One of the aircraft was damaged. Amundsen
and his crew worked for over three weeks
to clean up an airstrip to take off from ice.
They shovelled 600 tons of ice on 1 lb (400 g)
of daily food rations. In the end six crew members
were packed into the remaining aircraft. In a remarkable feat,
the pilot H. Riiser-Larsen took off and barely
became airborne over the cracking ice. They returned triumphant when
everyone thought they had been lost for ever.

The following year Amundsen, Ellsworth
and Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile
made the first crossing of the Arctic in the airship Norge
designed by Nobile. They left Spitzbergen on May 11, 1926
and landed in Alaska two days later.
The three previous claims to have arrived
at the North Pole – by Frederick Cook in 1908,
Robert Peary in 1909, and Richard E. Byrd
in 1926 (just a few days before the Norge) – are all disputed,
as being either of dubious accuracy or
outright fraud. Some of those disputing
these earlier claims therefore consider
the crew of the Norge to be the first
verified explorers to have reached the North Pole.

Amundsen disappeared on June 18, 1928
while flying on a rescue mission with the
famous Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson,
the French pilot Rene Guilbaud, and three more Frenchmen,
looking for missing members of Nobile's crew,
whose new airship the Italia had crashed while
returning from the North Pole. Afterwards, a pontoon from
the French Latham 47 flying-boat he was in,
improvised into a life raft, was found near the Tromsø coast.
It is believed that the plane crashed in fog in the Barents Sea,
and that Amundsen was killed in the crash,
or died shortly afterwards. His body was never found.
The search for Amundsen
was called off in September by the Norwegian Government.
A recent discovery (2003) suggests the plane went
down northwest of Bear Island.